On many occasions I’ve witnessed sales reps or managers being let go, and in that last coffee or drink with colleagues the person who’s been fired comes out with the usual lines: “they’ll find out”, “they’re useless”, “they’re nothing without me…” and every kind of phrase about how badly the company got it wrong by firing them. Then months and years go by, and it all comes to nothing.
If you want to show how wrong the company was to let you go, forget words and sink the company. Leave gracefully, with honour, saying goodbye pleasantly, but sink that company. Take away from them everything you gave them, everything that belongs to you, but in an elegant way and, of course, in a legal and ethical way. Through your work. You’ll have to work twice as hard if you really want to prove your worth, and your worth is only proven when your old company regrets it every day for the rest of its days until it goes bust. Is it possible? I’ve seen it done a few times. And mind you, we’re not talking about resentment or doing harm for the sake of it, because we are assuming that, with the company going under, we benefit, and in our new company we become a blessing for the firm’s future.
This is the story I can tell you.
For me, the world of sales is like a game of chess: the competition moves its pieces, you move yours, and whoever has drawn up the best strategy wins.
Many years ago I joined a company as Sales Manager for a new division, a division where I was going to have very few friends, because I had to handle the transition from the company’s old business model to the new one, with new clients and new services. I joined on the condition that I’d do things my way, without anyone having the authority or the nerve to meddle in how I did things. That way I’d make sure nobody would stand in the way of my success or my failure. Everything would depend on me, for better or worse. I’d accept either outcome without a problem.
On the day I arrived, the division’s annual turnover was about €75,000. That was the all-time high that the previous managers had reached in that division. After working my fingers to the bone for that company, putting in more than 16 hours a day, making enemies in every corner of the company, and even at the cost of the relationship I was in at the time, we managed to push turnover above a million euros in a little over 15 months.
My aim was to keep growing and even double the turnover, but the agreement we had about doing things my way began to be broken by the company’s General Manager, who started making decisions that, in my view, affected the future of the division we had worked so hard, with so much sweat and so many kilometres, to build.
There was no thanks, no pay rise; there was even a failure to honour the financial terms on commissions, and I didn’t make too much of it, because I felt we were building something big.
At some point along the way, that General Manager decided that someone else could take charge of everything I had built, and I found out I was going to be swapped for someone from the competition. Mind you, the company apparently didn’t want me to leave, but it wanted to take away what belonged to me: my work, my clients, my creation and all my effort. Did they really not want me to leave, or did they want to keep me there for a while so that I wouldn’t go and work for the competition?
Before leaving, I wanted to play my last card, so I went up to the company owner’s office to explain what was happening. All I said was: “We’ve worked very hard to achieve what we’ve achieved, and it’s a shame to throw it all away now.”
The owner of the company, a man who had always praised me in the national meetings, simply told me there was nothing he could do, that he couldn’t interfere in his General Manager’s decisions, and that he was sorry.
It’s one of those moments when you feel like crap, when you feel betrayed and sold out. Even so, following the advice of people I respect, I said goodbye to the company owner with style and elegance: “It’s been a pleasure working for this company.”
At that very moment I announced I was leaving the company and went over to the competition. Five days later, ironically, I was working with the former boss of the person who had replaced me.
It may sound arrogant, but I’m very good at what I do. That’s why I do it. They say business is business and you shouldn’t make it personal. In my particular case, if on top of being business it’s also personal, there will hardly be an obstacle that can stop me.
It was easier than I imagined.
I thought it would take me a long time to get back what was mine, but in just 3 months I achieved every sales director’s dream: bringing over absolutely all the clients, without exception, that I had won at my previous company.
I remember hesitating over whether to also bring over 2 clients who were bad payers or leave them to my old company. The new General Manager told me to leave them, and I remember replying: “I don’t want them to have the chance to switch on the factory machines, or for their drivers to cover a single kilometre.”
In the art of war applied to business, don’t settle for leaving your enemy wounded. When they’re weak, you have to finish them off so they can’t come back. And that’s what we did.
The person who replaced me was fired 6 months later, and the General Manager who had the idea of getting rid of me was fired soon after, in disgrace, since he didn’t get a graceful exit from the company. The division I had originally joined, which was supposedly going to be the future of the company, was closed, and the company later went into insolvency proceedings (that was no longer my doing, but the result of a combination of things).
A few curious things.
Now and then I run into that former General Manager. I greet him politely, but he doesn’t return the greeting, even though I’ve done nothing wrong to him, quite the opposite. I’m the one who should be angry.
On the other hand, when I run into the owner of the company, he is cordial with me and even shows a certain regret. The truth is he’s a great businessman, but like so many other businesspeople, he didn’t understand that success in business depends on the quality of the people you surround yourself with. In a way, he surrounded himself with clowns, and that’s why it all ended up as a circus.
The moral:
I’m sure you can draw plenty of them yourselves.
Further reading
- 5 things I learned in the world of direct sales
- 15 habits of successful salespeople
- 10 ways you, as a manager, may be making your employees less productive
Featured image: Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
